Ben Pridmore

Achievements

Pridmore is the 2.009 World Memory Champion, a title he also won in 2.004 and 2.008. 

From Derby in the United Kingdom,Pridmore achieved this by winning a 10-discipline competition, the World Memory Championship, which has taken place every year since 1.991.

He held the official world record for memorizing the order of a randomly shuffled 52-card deck, and has memorised a pack in a time of 24.68 seconds on television.

This record was beaten in 2.010 by German memory athlete and lawyer Simon Reinhard. 

He is ranked number four in the world ranking list for Memory Sports.

Pridmore's victory at the 2.009 World Championship was his eighth consecutive memory competition win since coming second at the 2.007 World Championship.

Besides memory sports he is famous for his mental calculation skills and took part in the Mental Calculation World Cup in 2.004, 2.006 and 2.010.

He has also won several medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad including becoming the 2.001 World Champion at the ten disciplined mind sport competition the decamentathlon.

He was prominently featured in the music video for DJ Shadow's single "Scale It Back".

Method

Like most memory experts, he creates a mental story, comprises a sequence of images that he has permanently memorised as representing number groups, playing card pairs etc. 

Pridmore often envisages a story around his old school, Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle as the framework for these memory sequences.